Wounds Beneath the Skin
by qwerty24
Summary: "There are wounds that never show on the surface that hurt more than anything that bleeds." Spoilers for series 4.
1. Chapter 1

**Hi! I'm a long time reader but first time writer of fanfiction. Like many, I was deeply affected by what happened in 4x03. I don't know where the show will take the storyline from here (I'm greatly anticipating Sunday!) but I wanted to write a piece that explored the impact that the assault had on Anna, as I'm sure the show will do in the coming episodes as well.**

**Spoilers for season 4 and warning for sexual assault.**

**I've gone with a T rating, but let me know if you think it should be changed.**

**DA and characters are not mine.**

_There are wounds that never show on the surface that hurt more than anything that bleeds._

She can feel him under her skin, like poison running through her veins. Her tears feel like acid against her cheeks and remind her of the cuts and bruises that mark her face. The floor of Mrs. Hughes' office is too cold, the wall against her back is too hard, the darkness is too consuming, threatening to swallow her whole.

_Anna, you must tell somebody. _She still hears Mrs. Hughes' voice in her head, remembers the fear that had hit her as hard as Mr. Green's fist when she recognized that she would have to face her husband later that night. And now, curled up here in the corner of the office, waiting for the material solaces of water and a dress that Mrs. Hughes will bring her, she remembers her response, _Nobody else must ever know. You promise me? _At the time she had been so certain that it would destroy her and the people she loved and cared about if any of them found out, but after seeing the worry and pain in Mrs. Hughes' eyes, hearing her own broken voice plead so desperately, _I need your help, _she isn't so sure if she can face what has happened on her own.

_Rape_, she realizes. That is the word. That is what has happened to her. She was raped by Mr. Green. Mr. Green raped her. She knows that there are all sorts of awful four-letter words that should never be uttered. This word, she thinks, is another one. It clouds her thoughts, so loud that she imagines somebody is next to her yelling, _you were raped, you're damaged goods now, nobody will ever want you or love you after what he's done to you._

The next thing that comes to Anna through the haze is John. _Oh God, _she thinks, _John. _His beautiful smile comes to her first, the way his eyes light and go up at the corners when he sees her. For a moment, she feels his strong arms around her, and she can imagine, just for an instant, that she is back in the cottage, curled up next to him, his warm body against hers, the reassuring rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.

But the comfort of imagination is fleeting, and Anna knows that John, good, honorable John can never know her like this. Bile rises in her throat, and she feels like she is going to be sick. She knows what this is – shame, guilt, self-blame – and she knows it is eating away at her slowly, that she should shield herself from these thoughts that will destroy her long after the bruises have faded, but without it, she has nothing. _I must have done something wrong. _She claws at her scalp, willing herself to rid her mind of these voices. She had told Mrs. Hughes only half of the reason why John can never find out. She fears losing him again to the animal in him that comes out in the face of the world's evils. She fears that he will murder Green and be hanged. But more than that, she fears that he will no longer love or want her. If he knew, would she still be the wife that he had almost given his life to have? _Slut, whore, _the voices in her head scream. Is that how he will see her? Will John understand that she is not whole? That Green has taken something from her, and that she no longer belongs completely to him? She fears this more than anything, and in the haze that surrounds the first few hours after the assault, Anna decides that he cannot know. The man who she trusts more than anything in the world, the one who she has promised her life to, cannot know of the shame that now marks her. If it is already destroying her, than at least she can spare him from it.

There is a soft knock on the door and Mrs. Hughes enters with a basin of water in one hand and a dress and towel draped over the other arm. Anna tries to compose herself, and finds a dark edge of humor in the notion of trying to appear presentable at a time like this. _There are some kinds of damage that can't be so easily hidden, _she thinks, as she rises from the corner of the room and holds the front of her dress closed.

Mrs. Hughes is gentle and kind, setting the basin down on the table, handing her the cloth and folding the dress over the back of the chair. "Do you want me to stay?" she says softly in her Scottish brogue. There is the unspoken question too: _How broken are you?_

"No," Anna replies, her voice already breaking, "I'll be fine." Really all she wants to say is: _Of course I want you to stay. I want, I_ need _you to put all the pieces of me back together. I need you to tell me what I do now, how do I keep on going? _But she doesn't say these things, and Mrs. Hughes leaves the room, the door closing softly behind her. Only until the clicking of her shoes has faded down the hallway does Anna begin to remove her dress. The front of the dress has come apart down the middle, a mirror of her body that has also been torn in half. The seams on the side of her corset have torn, and as she unlaces it, she inhales sharply at the burn of a broken rib. When all the layers of her shame that can be easily removed are pooled in a pile at her feet, she begins to assess the damage. Her forearms are already a mottled purple blue where he held her, and she thinks she can see the shape of his hands in the bruises that span her left shoulder and right thigh. Every breath is painful, her lungs protesting against even this simple task. She feels the ache acutely between her legs, and realizes that she has been digging the fingernails of her right hand into the skin of her left palm. She stares at the little crescent moon shapes that her fingernails have left behind– a sky she holds in the palm of her hand.

Anna places the washcloth into the basin and begins the long task of washing away the memory of him from her body. But she feels him everywhere; he is in her blood stream, contaminating everything. She can still taste him, whiskey and cigarettes and lust and violence. She scrubs at her skin until it is raw, but even then she cannot rid herself of him and what he has done to her. Sobs wrack her body, but she manages to get herself into the clean dress.

Anna curls herself into a corner, and in this vast castle of a house, her friends chattering just outside in the hallway about Dame Nellie's performance, her husband only rooms away, she has never felt more alone.

**Thank you so much for reading! Please comment and review. I really appreciate the time you take to give me any kind of positive or critical feedback. Let me know if this is something worth continuing. Thanks again!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you to everyone who read and gave this story a chance and to everyone who reviewed. It really means a lot to me.**

**DA and its characters are not mine. **_**Speak **_**belongs to Laurie Halse Anderson.**

"I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?" – Laurie Halse Anderson, _Speak_

The first time, it is so real that she thinks it is happening again. The flashback hits Anna like running into a brick wall, so sudden that she doesn't know until afterward, when the dust has settled that it was all in her head. One moment she is standing by the sink, getting a kettle of water ready for the stove, and the next moment, he is there, pressed up against her. "You look to me like you could use some real fun for once," his voice reverberates in her skull, "Is that what you want?"

_No, no, no! _The words form in the back of her throat, but there is a hand clamped against her mouth, and he is holding her down. His eyes are as dark as coal, piercing into her, and she is drowning, the fear thick and viscous as it fills her lungs, seeps beneath her skin and under her fingernails. The scream catches in Anna's throat, and it is like seeing a film for the second time, knowing what is coming next. _Please don't. Please. I'm sorry. Please let me go! Please!_

And like a wave, as quickly as it crashes into her and pulls her under, it draws away, leaving her alone and shaking uncontrollably, fingers gripping the edge of the countertop, knuckles deathly white. The kettle is on its side on the cold, hardwood floor where it was dropped. It is late, and a candle burns wearily in the doorway, the red flame flickering around the room, casting wild shadows, turning the water from the overturned kettle that is in a puddle at her feet into a pool of blood. Anna feels sick, and leans over the edge of the sink, but her empty stomach has nothing to offer, so instead, she heaves and coughs up acidic bile, willing herself to be rid of whatever toxins still run in her body from the memory of him.

_It isn't real, _Anna tells herself. _He's not here anymore, get a hold of yourself. Thank God nobody was here to see that. _She grabs a washcloth from the pantry and bends down gingerly to clean the mess. The left side of her body still aches with the sharp burn of a broken rib, and her joints feel as if they have endured a hundred years of work. She struggles to raise herself off the ground once the water has been cleaned; all she wants to do is curl up into a ball and let sleep or some other solace of forgetting take her away.

"Anna_,_" she hears a voice, _John_'s voice – so sweet and caring, laced with a kind of honesty and concern that she can only hope to give him in return.

"I'm over here," she replies, and her voice is unsteady and unfamiliar, like another person is in the room answering for her, and she is somewhere up above in the ceiling rafters, watching as this stranger below her tries to compose herself, as she tries to put on a smile for her husband. John knows before he even sees her that something has happened, that things have gotten worse, not better, and that she has fallen further away from him, receded farther into herself.

"I was going to make some tea for us before we headed back," her voice barely above a whisper, "but I dropped the kettle – I'm just feeling out of sorts lately." Her eyes are sunken and she averts her gaze, looking off into the darkness behind him as if she is waiting for something to materialize in the damp, smoky air. He sees that her face is sickly pale, her cheekbones jut out harshly, and the hollows along the side of her jaw are cast in shadow. John reaches out to tuck a stray curl that has found its way onto her forehead behind her ear, but she flinches away sharply, as if he has slapped her. His fingers only graze the side of her face, but his touch feels like burning iron on her skin, the shame still so raw that she wants to tell him to wash his hand before the invisible poison that mars her sullies him too.

"I – I'm sorry," Anna breathes unsteadily, "You just startled me, that's all." She knows that he doesn't believe her, that he wants her to say more, to answer all of the questions that she can see clouding his worried brown eyes.

The tension in the room is almost suffocating, weighing the air down with all of the things they have left unsaid. He wants so badly to reach out and touch her, to hold her hand, to lean in and kiss the thin scar below her left eye, to heal the pain that is written over her and take away whatever haunts her. He wants to say so many things: _Please talk to me, Anna. Let me hold you. What did I do wrong? Please tell me. _And most of all, he wants to say: _I love you, Anna. No matter what. _But the words sit somewhere in the back of his throat, blistering away at his vocal cords, and he wonders if he doesn't say anything because he is afraid of what her answer might be.

"It's terribly late, we should be getting back soon," Anna's voice cuts between them like a knife, "You head back first; I'll finish up here."

"Are you sure? I'll put out the candles," he replies, hoping that she will give him a reason to stay. Even if he cannot touch her, he wants, _needs, _to be near her. To know that she is still here, within his sight. She seems so small and fragile, as if the slightest wind might topple her over and blow her away.

"No," she says more forcefully than she means to. "No – I'll be alright. You go first." She is still unfocused, and he notices that she is breathing heavily, each uneven inhale and exhale ragged, like she has been running from something or someone.

She finds the candle snuffer in the cupboard as John sets an uneven rhythm down the hallway with his cane. She begins to put out the remaining candles in the kitchen and servants' hall, and the smoke from the candles envelops her and travels upwards in grey wisps, like a thousand unspoken regrets.

* * *

The second time, she just wants it all to end.

Nighttime and the warmth of her bed no longer bring her comfort, and she sleeps fitfully. By the time she falls into a sleep that is plagued by memories and voices, the sun has already begun to rise, setting the rolling Yorkshire hills on fire in the distance. When John awakens, he finds Anna facing away from him, curled in on herself at the edge of the bed. The sheets are in disarray, wrapped wildly around her waist and legs. Her back is hidden from him by only her thin cotton nightgown. He traces his fingers reverently down her spine, counting each vertebra, marveling at her perfection. He notices how thin she has become, and he can feel every bump along her spine, see the definition of every rib. As his fingers dance along her back, he becomes aware of a patch of discoloration between her shoulder blades, the dark blue-black bruise appearing purple through the filter of her white nightgown. He runs his fingers along it tentatively, and Anna shifts in her sleep, a low, pained moan escaping her lips. _How did this happen? Was it from when she fainted that past evening? _

He goes to wake her, to ask her how she got this angry bruise, and maybe to ask the unanswerable, _Are there any more? _He shifts to her side of the bed and leans over her carefully, placing his hand softly on her shoulder to rouse her. This is when it happens – the second flashback – and all she knows is that there is a weight above her, someone pinning her down. Her eyes fly open, and at first he is relieved that she does not pull away like he expects her to, but when he sees the unbridled fear in her blue-green eyes, and the way they glaze over, he feels his heart jump in his chest.

"_Anna," _John says softly, and then a little louder, his palms sweaty, fear darkening his usual calm, _"Anna – _can you hear me? It's time to get up." But she is caught in that space between sleep and reality, she is trapped, and Green looms above her, a scream captured between his teeth as his angry mouth presses down on hers.

_Last time, _she thinks, _I didn't fight as hard as I could have. _And then, she is thrashing beneath her husband, hands clawing at him, legs flailing. Now he is truly afraid. "Anna, Anna!" he pleads desperately, _what have I done to my wife? _He tries to quiet her, grasping her forearms, not realizing that his hands lie on the bruises that another man has left on her, and that behind her glazed eyes, there is a hell unfolding he cannot even begin to imagine. He is afraid because he has seen the expression on Anna's face before. He has seen on it on the faces of the young men who came back from Africa with him, changed forever, their thousand-yard stares holding memories of a war that they are still fighting over and over again, dying in battles that rage on in their minds, that only they can see.

And just like the first one that night in the kitchen, the flashback ends as suddenly as it began. She is thrown harshly back into reality, exhaling suddenly like she has been punched in the gut, and stares up into the desperate eyes of her husband.

It is after this second one that she realizes she is safe nowhere. Not at Downton, where she has worked since she was a young girl, not in the village where danger now lurks around every corner, and not here in her bed where she should feel safest of all in John's arms. He is everywhere now, and has filled every part of her mind, and every facet of her life. She cannot go anywhere, even in her dreams, without seeing his face contorted in rage, tasting the whiskey on his tongue, hearing his demeaning, _I know you wanted this, _feeling his teeth against her lips.

_He has taken everything from me._

**Thanks for reading! Please leave a review if you have any positive or critical feedback that you would like to share with me. I really appreciate it!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter! It means a lot to me. I'll try my best to update more regularly to this story, I know it's been a while.**

**DA is not mine and ****_The Tenth Circle_**** belongs to Jodi Picoult.**

"It was a catch-22: If you didn't put the trauma behind you, you couldn't move on. But if you did put the trauma behind you, you willingly gave up your claim to the person you were before it happened." - Jodi Picoult,_ The Tenth Circle_

Sometimes she can go minutes, even hours without thinking about it. Those are on the good days, when she doesn't wake up at dawn screaming, covered in sweat, as John sits beside her, giving her space, wanting so badly to reach out and hold her, but knowing that it will only make it worse. On the good days, she doesn't need to wash her hands a dozen times to erase the memory of him from her skin. And on the good days, she can let John hold her hand on the way to work without flinching, even let him press his lips reassuringly against her forehead or temple, murmuring sweet nothings to her as she drifts off into a sleep that she prays will be free from Green's coal-black eyes. She is glad that he knows now. That she doesn't have to hide her pain anymore, that she doesn't have to explain anything to him when she falls apart at dinner, or when her eyes glaze over every time she passes the boot room. She is glad that she is back home in the cottage with him, no longer in the dark room in the servants' quarters which was filled with only the echoing sound of Green's voice and her own grief and sadness.

But even on the good days, John cannot kiss her on the lips, the memory of Green's mouth is still too fresh in her mind. The way that his mouth tasted like whiskey, his teeth against her lips, the metallic tang of blood that she realized later was her own. She knows that John's kisses are different, and she holds onto the memory of them, his gentleness, the way he tastes like honey and mint and smoke, but she is afraid that he will lean in, and she will see Green instead, and Anna tells herself that she loves him too much to hurt him like that. Even on the good days, when the recollections assail her less often, she cannot go without it shadowing over her, over them.

Anna is preparing for bed when she hears the bedroom door squeak and John's stuttered steps enter into the room. She is not expecting him because of the unspoken arrangement between them - whenever Anna changes in the morning for work, or in the evenings for bed, John will leave and go to the kitchen or sitting room until she is ready. Although he knows what happened, she cannot bear the thought of him seeing her, seeing her body, the canvas of her shame. The scars have faded into thin white lines, little raised marks on her skin like punctuation marks, an exclamation here, a question there. The bruises are now a sickly yellow, the larger ones still tinged with blue and green, but she thinks that the ones on her forearms are still in the shape of his hands, and she wonders if she will ever be free of them, or if Green will always be pinning her down. The broken rib has set, and it hurts much less to breathe now, but the stinging sensation with every inhale and exhale is a constant reminder of things she would rather forget.

As John turns towards her, she wraps the loose robe tightly around her, wishing that she had something more to hide herself with.

"Anna - ," he calls almost reverently, and then stops suddenly, as if he is unsure of what to say next.

"Did you forgot something?" she replies, hoping that that is all, and they can go on with their pretending, letting the past fester somewhere in the darker parts of their wounded souls.

"No, I didn't forget anything," he says. And then he makes a broken, strangled sound, something between a sigh and a cry, "Oh, Anna," he whispers in a voice that frightens her , "you are my wife and I love you more than anything in the world."

Anna is startled, and she wants so much to reach out to him, to take away the pain that smolders behind his hazel eyes, but all she can manage is a forced, "I love you, too, John."

He begins to move towards her, and she notices that his limp is more pronounced tonight, his footsteps more uneven than usual, the rhythm he makes against the floor slower and more unsteady. "You've seen my scars," he says quietly, and at first she doesn't realize what he is trying to get at until his thumb traces along the scar that ghosts beneath her left eye.

"My knee," he murmurs, "when you saw it that first night, did you love me any less?" She wants to tell him that this is unfair, that he cannot do this to her, but there is also a part of her that wants, _needs_, this as badly as he does. Love, she thinks, is like a jagged puzzle, and sometimes, to make things fit together again perfectly, you have to smooth the sharp edges, rubbing at the open wounds until they heal correctly.

"No, of course not. I loved you more for it. It's a part of who you are, and how could I not love something that is a piece of you?" she responds quickly, as if it is the simplest thing in the world, and in some ways it is - loving John is so easy, and so right, she can't even imagine not being able to.

He threads his fingers through the sash of her robe, and she can feel the warmth of his hand against her stomach, and she knows that it is John who is here with her, not Green, and that he would never, could never hurt her. "You'll be disgusted," she pleads one final time, knowing that it is futile. She wants him to know all of it, or at least as much as she can tell him. _No more secrets_, she thinks, and this will be one step closer. To show him the marks that have been left on her skin, the bruises and scars that now mar her, the reminders that it was all real, will be a relief.

She wonders if there is a redemptive force in love, and imagines that when he sees the blemishes on her skin he will be able to heal them, patching her up from outside in, making her whole again. She pulls the sash of the robe out of the knot and away from her body, letting the front open up to reveal only a thin slip underneath.

First, she shows him the broken rib, the flesh around it tender and swollen. An old bruise is still in bloom around it, and he leans down to run his fingers along the length of it, pulling away when she hisses at the sting. "I didn't know..., " his voice trails off in an uncertain lilt, emotions flashing behind his eyes that she has never seen in him before.

"It's getting better," she tries her best, but they both know that they are empty words, and she should really be saying_ it still hurts_. She lets him navigate his way across the other healing bruises along her torso, watching as his fingers brush along her skin like he is trying to paint them away. Next, she leads him to her back, where he finds the bruise that he discovered earlier between her shoulder blades. Anna cannot see the battle that John fights inside his head as he tries not to imagine all the ways in which she could have gotten these stains on her porcelain skin. _Don't do it to yourself_, he tells himself, _don't do it to Anna_. He notices light pink parallel lines extending lengthwise down her back, and at first he is confused, wondering how she could have gotten scars like these. And then it hits him, and he has to grit his teeth and clench his eyes shut to control his emotions, glad that Anna is facing away from him, so that she cannot see him like this. _That bastard's nails raking down her back_, he thinks, and he wants to hit or break something - or kill someone.

When Anna guides him to her legs and thighs, she is the one who has to close her eyes. She doesn't want to see how he responds to the expansive bruise, still a mottled blue-purple, that extends from her upper right thigh and to underneath the hem of her slip. He balances himself on his good knee, clenching and unclenching his fists, drawing in deep breaths until the rage passes, and he can stand up to cup his wife's face in his hands and lean in to kiss away away the salt of her tears.

"I love you, Anna," he murmurs reverently against her jawline, "you're the strongest woman I've ever known." And later that night, when she falls asleep in the crook of his arm after they have both emptied themselves of their tears, he tucks her into the warmth of their bed, giving a silent prayer to a God that he sometimes struggles to believe in that tonight will be a calm one for both of them, and that tomorrow will be easier.

But when he closes his eyes to join Anna in her slumber, all he can see is the map of red and pink and blue and purple drawn on her soft skin, a reminder of all the pain that she has been put through. John gets up from the bed, his knee protesting with an angry throb, and limps wearily to the doorway, leaving their bedroom which seems heavy with the burden of hurt and honesty. The cool air of the hallway fuels his tumultuous thoughts and emotions, and suddenly the anger is white-hot, rage clouding his senses, and his fist smashes into the drywall, the sharp cracking sound of knuckles on wood a welcome release which pulls him back to his senses. He doubles over, sobs racking his body, blood trickling down the wall from the indentations on its once clean, white surface.

Back in their bedroom, Anna sleeps peacefully, clutching at the blanket laid out where her husband should be, thinking that he is there beside her, just a few grasps away, a little closer to the full truth, a little closer to piecing them back together.

And slowly, they begin to heal.

**Thanks for reading! Reviews mean so much to me and I really appreciate them. I will try my best to update this more regularly, and I see some more places where I could take this story. Also, I know this was fairly angsty, so I might begin to lighten things up in later chapters. Thanks again!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Thank you so much to TheInvisibleLlama, retrobitss, Adri and both Guests for reviewing the last chapter! I really appreciate it.**

**Downton Abbey is not mine, and ****_Diary_**** belongs to Chuck Palahniuk.**

"It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scars to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace." - Chuck Palahniuk, _Diary_

In the coming days, they realize that the moments that matter the most are the small, unspoken ones: The mornings when Anna wakes up peacefully, curled up in the safety and warmth of John's arms, confident in her knowledge that the man next to her is the one she loves and cares for more than anything. The first time they kiss after the assault - they are sitting on the moth-eaten couch in front of the fire after a long day at work, and she leans in to him, and he knows what she wants right away - at first he is hesitant, unsure if it is right, but when John looks into his wife's green-grey eyes, and sees the plea, _show me you want me, too_, he cannot deny her and when their lips come together, the kiss is harder, needier than he expects, the pent-up emotions spilling out in the way that she pulls his lower lip between her teeth, the way he furls his fingers around the golden strands of her hair.

There are other moments too, like when their half-days match up and they go into Ripon together; Anna sees a collection of poetry by Robert Bridges in the bookstore, and the words linger in the air as she whispers, "_We used to read his poems together, remember?_" and he wants to answer her, to tell her, "_Of course I remember, how could I forget?_" but all he does is lead her into the store and pick the book off the shelf and bring it to the register.

And later that night, when he joins her beneath the covers of their bed, the chill of the Yorkshire night making his leg ache more than usual, she holds the book out to him with two hands like an offering, and says, "_make it like before_," and he wishes it were that easy, so he reads to her in his low, soothing voice that lulls her to sleep, back to a time when everything was just a little bit simpler.

* * *

When Anna and Bates arrive at Downton that morning, the servants hall and kitchen are still fairly quiet; only Mrs. Patmore and Daisy are up preparing the servants' breakfast, and Mrs. Hughes is in her office, sorting out the bills and paperwork for the week.

She doesn't want to let go of John's large hand which envelopes hers when they get to the threshold, but she understands propriety and so she reluctantly pulls away from from him, wishing that they could stay like this forever, hands intertwined, somewhere in between the darkness of nighttime and the light of day, facing the world together.

They sit next to each other at the table, sipping on still steaming cups of tea, the first of many that will keep them running throughout the day. The hot tea numbs her tongue and the insides of her cheeks, but she doesn't mind, taking a sort of comfort in the stinging heat, a reminder that she is in the present, away from wherever her mind and memories always seem to want to take her away to. The flashbacks come less frequently now, but when they do, they are just as vivid as the first - the punch across her right cheek as unexpected as when it really happened, even though she has his seen his angry fist coming towards her so many times in her mind's eye, the chill that went down her spine when she realized what was coming, the _I know you want this_ that his grating voice left reverberating in her ear. John tries his best to ease her pain, but she can tell that there is a different battle raging in his head when he draws her out of a flashback. _I want to know_, his eyes plead, _tell me what happened_, _let me carry some of your burden_. But she knows that there are some things she will have to keep to herself forever, some things that hurt so much she cannot put them into words.

She understands now that there is a _before_ and an _after_. Try as they might, there is no way to return to the _before_. There was a time when they were caught in between, in the limbo of having experienced the pain, but being unable to try and move forward. But now, sitting here together at the table in the servants hall, there is some solace in the ways that they have healed in the _after_. John's hand rests lightly on her leg, and she can feel the warmth of his large palm through her dress. She finds that sometimes she craves his touch. To feel him against her, not Green, to know the safety and the closeness of a man, to curl her fingers through his hair and to run her hands along his strong back. Or, like now, to just find peace in the knowledge that he is here with her, to have even that small connection with him is enough, she thinks, to keep her sane. Anna remembers their promise to each other from some nights ago, to _make new memories, happy memories_, and she feels the warmth spread inside her. Even after, she knows that the two of them can have that together. It might not be like to was in the _before_, but from the way that he holds her to him tightly at night, the way that he kisses her temple tenderly in the mornings, she knows that they can, they will have happiness, _we deserve to know it, if only for a little while_, Anna thinks, _we've been through enough_.

The other servants trickle in as Daisy and Ivy set out the morning meal, first some of the maids, and then the footmen - Jimmy's tie is still askew, a tuft of hair is uncombed at the back of his head. They seat themselves around the table, chattering about their work for the day, or whatever harmless gossip that has come in from the delivery boys and the paper. Moments like this are when she can imagine that nothing ever happened. The world seems so simple, so easy to understand sitting here at the table that it is difficult to fathom that something like what she went through could even be real, that someone like Green could even exist. But she is drawn back to reality when Daisy comments in her upbeat lilt, "You're looking much better today, Anna. We were all quite worried about you, weren't we?"

A chorus of agreeing murmurs answers her from around the table, and Anna feels her cheeks redden, averting her eyes. John's hand tightens around her leg, but he says nothing. "I - I, yes, I'm feeling much better," she replies unconvincingly, hating the sudden attention that has been thrust upon her. She hadn't realized that her anguish had been so visible from the surface, but people must have sensed that something was wrong. Anna releases a breath she didn't know she was holding when Lady Mary's bell rings. John gives her hand a supportive squeeze, and as she stands, she runs her fingers discreetly along the inside seam of his leg, flashing him a small smile as he gives her a bewildered, albeit happy look. _See_, she says to herself, _just because it is always a shadow over us, does not mean that it must control us._

* * *

John is cleaning and blackening Lord Grantham's hunting boots when Mrs. Hughes comes in. He is so startled by her entrance that he drops the bristled brush, the clatter when it hits the floor awakening him from his dark daydream of imagining all the ways that he could make Anna's nameless attacker suffer. "Mrs. Hughes," he says, regaining his composure, "is there something I can do for you?"

"No, Mr. Bates," she replies in her reassuring Scottish brogue, "I only want to talk to you - about Anna." She closes the door behind her, the soft click of the lock belying the seriousness of her tone.

Now he is worried, the lines of his forehead furrow, and he wants to ask her what he is still doing down here in the boot room if something has happened to her, but he remains calm, trusting that this kind woman who loves Anna like a daughter will know what to do. "Of course, Mrs. Hughes. What is it about Anna that you'd like to talk about?"

"Before what I say you what I've come here to tell you, I'd just like to let you know that Anna really does seem to be doing much better," adds Mrs. Hughes, her hands kneading together nervously in worry of what she must say next.

"Yes," he responds, "she certainly is." But all he really wants to say is, _all of you talk of how my sweet Anna is_ 'doing better,' _but what do mean? Is it_ 'better' _that she only has nightmares some nights, is it 'better' that I can touch her now without her flinching every time?_

Mrs. Hughes takes a deep breath, struggling to find the best way to piece the words together, and finally exhales sharply, deciding that there is no easy way for her to say these words, and no easy way for Mr. Bates to hear them. "After the attack," she begins, "I asked Anna what she would do if she was with child."

He feels that sudden, familiar jolt of rage that overtakes him whenever he thinks of Anna and all the pain she has been through, and it takes all of his will power to quell the anger and hear what Mrs. Hughes says next. Her voice lowers to barely above a whisper, so quiet that he has to strain to hear her, "she told me - , " she stops for a long moment, still grappling with whether or not she should tell him. "She told me that if she were with child, _she would kill herself_." She breathes out the last few words almost silently that at first he thinks he has heard her incorrectly, grasping the edge of the table for support.

A strangled cry escapes his lips when his mind fully wraps around what Mrs. Hughes is telling him. "What - she said _what_?" He knew that the days immediately after the assault must have been a living hell for his Anna, and he curses himself for not being there to provide even the smallest comfort to her, but it never even occurred to him that such a thought could have crossed Anna's mind, and the confusion, the anger and the hurt boil up inside him. His fingers grip the table top tighter, his arm trembling, his knuckles turning white under the strain.

"I only tell you this, Mr. Bates, because I think, as Anna's husband, you should know. Take care of her, please," she says quietly. She turns to go, but before she steps out into the dimly lit hallway, she soothes softly, "Anna loves you so very much. I have faith that you'll weather this together. Just take care of her Mr. Bates. Take good care of her. And please let me know if there is ever anything I can do."

And so she leaves John there in the boot room, the half shined shoe in his right hand, the edge of the tabletop crushed between his other, and the tears well and then spill from his eyes, the agony overtaking his body in raking sobs. He doubles over, resting his forearms on the table, thinking of all the ways that he has failed Anna, the best thing that has ever happened to him in his life.

* * *

On their walk home to their cottage, Anna senses that something is wrong. It had been a good day; her work had been productive, but not too taxing, and she had thought about Green and the rest of it no more than usual. But when she met John by the courtyard door to return home, she saw the turmoil in his hazel eyes, and by the time they reach the cottage, she is sure that something must have happened during the day to trouble her husband so.

"I'll make us some tea; it's been a long day," she says as she helps John remove his coat and holds his cane. She hopes that he will snap out of this haze, but he does not respond to her, only moving mechanically toward the kitchen table before dropping down into a chair wearily, and his shoulders hunching over, head resting limply in his hands, as if even sitting is too much a task for his drained body.

When she joins him at the table moments later and pulls out the seat next to him, he breaks. He lifts his head from his hands and whispers, anguished, "_Oh, Anna, please don't leave me._ If you left me, what would I do without you?" She is startled by his words, and by the unbridled sorrow that fills his eyes and lines his face.

"What foolishness are you talking about, John? You know I would never leave you," she says, then adds, as the tears begin to run down his face, "You're scaring me."

"Anna, promise me. You must promise me that you'd never go, that you'd never take yourself from this world." He knows that this is unfair, that he should be calm, that he should take care of her like Mrs. Hughes told him to, but he is a weak, weak man, he thinks, and he relies so heavily on Anna, and right now, he needs her to heal the wounds that have opened on his heart.

"_Take myself from this world?_" she murmurs uncertainly, and as realization crosses her face, she says brokenly, cupping his cheek, "Oh God, John, what thoughts have been brewing away in your head all day?"

"Please, Anna, I couldn't live without you. I love you so much, my darling. I couldn't - I couldn't be without you."

"John," she pleads, "John, look at me. I don't know where you've gotten these ideas from, but I would never chose to leave you. You know I couldn't live without you either."

And when he looks into her beautiful green eyes, clouded with unshed tears, he knows that it will always hurt this much, that there are some wounds that do not close completely, and he pulls her to him, burying himself in the curve of her throat, whispering against her cool skin, "You promise me?"

"I promise."

**Thanks for reading! Please leave a review; I really appreciate it!**


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